Photo: Maggie Hardie/REX / TT (2004)
Sample of authors
Melo, Patrícia
The Brazilian dramaturge, journalist and author Patrícia Melo is an internationally renowned member of a generation of urban authors that emerged in Brazil in the 1990s. Her crime novels, informed by sex and violence and set in the favelas, Brazil’s urban slums, are especially acclaimed. She researches her stories by interviewing prison inmates and people who live in the slums.
Melo was born in A...
Literary figures
Erlendur Sveinsson
Gender: Male
A detective inspector in Reykjavík, and the main character in a row of police novels by Arnaldur Indriðason. Erlendur – his surname, Sveinsson, is rarely named as is customary in Iceland – is a skilful and empathetic police officer, but rather tired and sometimes anxiety-ridden. One reason is that he left his family when the children were small, for reasons that he can’t himself remember. His ex-w...